Rosemary
by cartographer
Summary: He needs to know that she's not throwing herself face-first into trouble with no one to watch her six. That's all.


Garrus feels only the slightest pang of guilt over tapping into her omnitool so he can track Shepard around the Citadel. He knows she probably wouldn't care – except to wonder whether Cerberus could do the same, and he's taken care of that – but he's not giving her the weight of his concern on top of everything else the universe is throwing at her.

It's fine. He just... He needs to know that she's not throwing herself face-first into trouble with no one to watch her six. That's all.

She spends an hour at the refugee's memorial wall before he puts down his calibrations and makes his way off the ship.

The Citadel is so crowded these days. Everywhere there's a corner or a cargo unit, or even just somewhere to sit down, someone's taken over and made a nest. He used to patrol this stretch of Zakera Ward a long time ago, in another life. It was shopping then; there'd been a nice little electronics store down at that end. Damn, he'd forgotten about that place. He used to spend some of his off-duty hours there, keeping up on the latest omnitool parts. Now it's empty and being used as an eatery. Some dusty, long-forgotten part of his brain automatically begins to spit out citations, broken regulations, tickets, fines, the health inspector's omni-extension... What is all of that still doing in there? He'd thought all that long since ground to dust, instead of taking up precious memory he needs to calibrate that damned cannon _again_.

He's got nothing against the Alliance, but if they ever put their hands on the Thanix again, he won't be responsible for what happens.

Shepard's sitting at the wall of the dead and missing, her legs kicked out in front of her and her hands interlaced over her stomach. Garrus leans against the wall and watches her, but if she knows he's there, she's not letting on. She's watching people as they stand at the wall, scanning the pictures there, some with growing desperation or weary acceptance; others are putting up photos wherever there's room, and there's precious little room.

But Shepard isn't here for that. Her family's long dead, killed by batarian slavers. He watches her carefully, cataloguing all the little things she does; it reminds him of those other lives he's lived, when he was just a C-Sec officer tailing a suspect, when Archangel was the terror of Omega's gangs, looking for the right way in. She's not paying attention to the wall, or the people who have been there for a while; she's looking at the people coming and going, checking them as they come in. She's waiting for someone. Not for him, because she would have asked him to come if she'd wanted him there, or come found him instead – she knows where on the Citadel he tends to gravitate. She's sat here for a while. There aren't many people she'd do this for.

The plot grows clearer when Steve Cortez comes out of the elevator. He's got a small picture frame in his hands. _Ah_.

Shepard levers herself out of her chair when she sees Cortez; they only talk for a moment. He can't hear them from here, but her body language is urging, convincing, his reluctant and far away. He finds himself thinking _Just do what Shepard wants. It always seems to work out in the end_. Shepard wouldn't be Shepard if she didn't try to solve everyone's problems for them.

He has to admit that he's glad she didn't let him kill Sidonis. At the time, he'd been furious. He'd wanted Sidonis to suffer just a little more. He'd deserved it. But Garrus is finding that these days, he hasn't got time for revenge. The Reapers are so much more important than anything else that Sidonis just doesn't matter anymore.

She hugs Cortez a little stiffly. He looks at her for a moment, and then turns around, staring at the small picture frame now sitting on a ledge under the memorial wall.

He probably shouldn't be here watching her like this when she's unaware. It's a little creepy. He smiles at her, just a weary little flick of a mandible, and turns to head back to the _Normandy_.

His omnitool pings.

 _Where do you think you're going?_

He laughs, shaking his head. Figures. She'd probably known he was there the whole time.

 _Some of us have real work to do_ , he types. But he leans back against the wall. The Thanix can do without him for now.

 _Some of us don't lurk around corners like gigantic stalkery space raptors._

 _That isn't even a word, Shepard._

Shepard bombards him with picture after picture of something called a _Utahraptor_ , and even though that's not what Garrus was talking about, he's oddly charmed by the comparison. He also wonders how Shepard's ancestors managed to out-survive something that looks like _that_ , but he's long since given up being truly interested in the bizarre accident that is _homo sapiens_.

In return he sends her a picture of the _tunnisk_. Palaven doesn't have many native carnivores; it's always been an evolutionary niche that the turians claimed for themselves. There were never very many _tunnisk_. They were too big to share hunting ranges, long and low and sleek with scales, armored against the radiation that Palaven's atmosphere is ill-equipped to filter. He remembers seeing one in a museum when he was young. Its claws were nearly as long as he was tall. When it came raiding, his ancestors died in droves.

Shepard's response is slow and admiring. _Damn. Wouldn't want to meet that on a cold night._

 _Nor yours_. _You called them raptors?_

 _Dinosaurs. They lived a long time ago. Our kids love them. Especially this one._ And again she sends him a flood of images of a dinosaur, huge head packed with teeth balanced out by a long, fleshy battering ram of a tail. He has to admit that this one is much more impressive. This is his kind of carnivore.

These images are in a packet that when Garrus investigates, he finds to be nearly a week old.

 _Do you keep these around to look at?_

 _Shut up._ That comes by itself. Garrus laughs. _I'm sending it to Grunt_ , she says a second later, typing furiously at him from across the room. _It's a get-well present. He likes them._

 _I can see why. There aren't many things that make him feel small._

She thinks about that before replying. _I think it's the challenge. You know krogans are really excited to find the next brick wall to throw themselves against. And T-Rex is the killer, the apex predator. The ultimate challenge. It would probably eat him in two bites, but who am I to judge?_

 _Oh, I don't know_ , he types. _I think we could take one. We just killed those harvesters on Tuchanka, after all._

He catches himself the instant after he sends it. He hadn't meant to bring up the Reapers and the war. This is supposed to be leave. Even Shepard can't fight around the clock. _Damn_. But it's too late, he's spoiled the mood now. _Sorry, Shepard. Guess I'm not very good at this relaxing thing._ He stares at the message, doesn't send it. Shepard pings him again instead.

 _Come here. Please_.

Garrus flicks a rueful mandible at the idea that she thinks she has to ask, turns off his omnitool, and drops into the seat next to her.

"I'm good at ruining the mood," he offers. She's not mad, but... Maybe he's not as good at human faces as he thought he'd become. He can't figure her out right now. She's sitting sideways, looking at him like...

Shepard takes his hand, carefully interlacing their fingers. "Have you heard from your family?"

"Not yet," he answers guardedly, watching her, trying to figure out where this is headed.

"Then why aren't they up there?" She tilts her head at the memorial wall, the thousands of pictures plastered nearly up to the ceiling. It's going to spill out into the hallway soon, he judges.

Garrus shakes his head. "Shepard, that's not..." He gropes for the words. This is so far outside of what he'd expected that he doesn't even know how to feel. Shepard lets him think in silence, only stroking his hand a little. He's not even sure she knows she's doing it. "They don't belong up there," he says eventually.

Shepard watches him, watches his face, but he doesn't look at her. Then she touches his face and turns it toward her. "This wall isn't about who's lost," she tells him softly. "It's for us. It's saying that we will remember them, that they exist. We won't let them be forgotten." She kisses him, so swiftly that he can't respond. "Your father and sister will make it," she says, watching him intently. So sure is she that he doesn't ward her off with cold hard facts, as is his habit. The truth is, he wants to believe her. "Put them up. Remind us that they're real."

Garrus opens his mouth to remind her that he doesn't carry around pictures, but she shoves papers at him. He takes them and groans. She's found the only picture of him and his father that exists on the extranet, when he graduated tertiary with honors. He's so _young_. Garrus is finding it difficult to remember how it felt to be that person. Solana's is similar, but she looks happier. His father's pride is writ large on his face. Garrus looks back at his own graduation picture and finds the subtle pride and happiness there that he's never seen before. He hasn't looked at this picture in years. He spreads his hand over the pictures, touches them, prays to the Spirits with all his might for their safe return.

He stands and fixes the pictures to the wall, side by side.

"Leave's up," Shepard says behind him. She sounds like she regrets having to say it.

"Yeah," Garrus says. "In a minute." He taps into his visor with well-practiced, miniscule motions of his eye and takes a picture, something to keep with him. He has others, of course, but... He wants this.

In the elevator, he wraps his arms around Shepard and holds her as tightly as she'll let him. He drops his face into her hair and closes his eyes. "Thanks."

Shepard rubs her face against his armor. "Tell me about them?"

He breathes her in with long, deep, soothing breaths. "Yeah," he says. "I'd like that."

* * *

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance." - Ophelia


End file.
